March 02, 2012

Houdini 12 Release

Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D animation and visual effects software, is proud to announce the immediate release of Houdini 12 which offers a wealth of new features and performance enhancements making it easier for CG artists to accomplish more and iterate faster. Side Effects releases Houdini 12 with significantly faster Pyro FX and FLIP fluids, Bullet integration, production-ready Cloth, and Alembic export.

“The ease of training FX artists using Houdini 12 for volume simulations is now straightforward, and the feedback and iteration time makes for an enjoyable workflow for volume rendering.”

“My first two weeks of using Houdini 12 in production, I couldn't stop smiling!” says Szymon Kapeniak, CG Supervisor, Human Ark. “Everything is so much faster and easier, yet on its surface it's still the same Houdini.”

The performance enhancements in Houdini 12 are already having an impact on how Houdini artists work. During beta testing, many studios opted to put the new version into production. The significantly faster simulation times were particularly popular, especially when using the GPU to run fire and smoke simulations using OpenCL.

Built on a powerful new geometry engine, Houdini 12 includes targeted optimizations to dynamics and rendering and a reworked OpenGL 3 viewport. Houdini 12 also includes Bullet solver integration, Pyro FX 2, faster, more accurate FLIP fluids, production-ready cloth, an Alembic exporter and much more.

Houdini’s Mantra renderer, recently recognized with a Scientific and Technical Achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, now brings physically-based rendering to volumes such as smoke and fire. Mantra also includes a 300 times speed improvement when instancing to points.

“Houdini has refined the dynamics framework and crystallized the smoke/pyro simulation pipeline to make for a very robust and phenomenally fast workflow to create multithreaded and GPU-assisted grid-based volume simulations and rendering. The speed gains going from Houdini 11 to Houdini 12 are beyond an order of magnitude in this respect,” says Theodor Vandernoot , Sony Pictures Imageworks. “The ease of training FX artists using Houdini 12 for volume simulations is now straightforward, and the feedback and iteration time makes for an enjoyable workflow for volume rendering.”

Houdini 12 can be downloaded from sidefx.com immediately with Houdini Escape available for as low as US$1,995 and Houdini Master available for as low as US$6,695. The free Apprentice Edition can also be downloaded today and Houdini Apprentice HD is available for an annual fee of US$99.